Description
Book SynopsisRead this book and the world''s most famous image will never look the same again. For the world''s greatest cultural icon still has secrets to reveal - not the silly secrets that the ''Leonardo loonies'' continue to advance, but previously unknown facts about the lives of Leonardo, his father, Lisa Gherardini, the subject of the portrait, and her husband Francesco del Giocondo. From this factual beginning we see how the painting metamorphosed into a ''universal picture'' that became the prime vehicle for Leonardo''s prodigious knowledge of the human and natural worlds. We learn about the new money of the ambitious merchant who married into the old gentry of Lisa''s family. We discover Lisa''s life as a wife and mother, her association with sexual scandals, and her later life in a convent. We meet, for the first time, previously undiscovered members of Leonardo''s immediate family and discover new information about his early life. The tiny hill town of Vinci is placed before us, with it
Trade ReviewKemp analyses the painting as a key to all of Leonardos thinking and works, describing it as the 'window of the soul', in which is reflected all the knowledge acquired by the artist-scientist in the course of his life spent in the study of anatomy, optics, perspective, geology, atmosphere, hydrology and the science of painting. * Pietro C. Marani, The Burlington Magazine *
Elegantly-produced study. * Richard Owen, The Tablet *
This well-researched book is also highly readable: after so many bunkum theories, the sober truth about the Mona Lisa's origins comes across as surprisingly radical and refreshing. * Alastair Smart, Prospect *
Riveting reading... This book is a veritable mine of information. Beautifully written, it reaches out in an engaging and fluid way to those who know relatively little about the subject, whilst still imparting fascinating new evidence to the more experienced on the origins of the painting, and also about Mona Lisa herself. It is not just a further paean to 'the most famous painting in the world', it also offers to the reader a rich and tantalising picture of the world in which Leonardo da Vinci inhabited, and the huge part that an insignificant bourgeois woman, Mona Lisa del Gioconda, played in history. * Sandra Callard, On: Yorkshire Magazine *
This book is state of-the-art informative and will be mightily useful for students. * James Hall, Literary Review *
A model of clear-headed rationality, succinct, intriguing and marvellously readable. * Michael Bird, Daily Telegraph *
[Kemp & Pallanti] marshal meticulous research into the family histories of painter, patron and subject; deep knowledge of the traditions and allusions of Renaissance art; and scientific analyses of the venerated object. * Philip Ball, Nature *
Brings the portrait of the enigmatic Lisa into a sharper focus than ever before. * Ross King, Woodstock and Bladon News *
Fascinating... revelatory... with their scholarly and fluent book Kemp and Pallanti have given Lisa Gherardini, mother and silk merchants wife, a new lease of authentic life and re-established the Mona Lisa as an extraordinary painting with ordinary origins. * Michael Prodger, The Sunday Times *
[A] stimulating study grounded in documentary and literary sources, not to mention the painting itself.Readable and informative, this book is invaluable for offering a better understanding of the painting.Essential * na, CHOICE *
Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments Introduction 1: Old Gentry and New Money: Lisa and Francesco 2: Leonardo from Vinci 3: Ser Piero and Francesco 4: An intermittent History 1: Renaissance Records 5: An intermittent History 2: The Rise to Fame 6: From Portrait to Poetry 1: Dolce still nuovo 7: From Portrait to Poetry 2: Painter and Poets 8: The Universal Picture 9: Close Observation: Science Intervenes Conclusion Index Further Reading
